Transcript: Yoav Mayer-Wolf | Agora | How Do You Build a Product for Real Estate Investors?

Eyal David: [00:01] Hi, it's Eyal. Today my guest on the episode was Yoav, VP Product at Agora, which is basically a SaaS platform for managing real estate investments. In this episode we laid out and talked about the different verticals the company works in, and in general we talked about verticals in SaaS, mainly from every angle: as a competitive advantage, how you enter a vertical, where it's worth entering, how you evaluate and how you do discovery, and of course how you market, how you create relevant features and a product that fits that vertical. Besides that, we also talked at length about the industry itself, real estate fintech, let's call it, and how you bring AI into it, and we also talked about Yoav's path through companies like Microsoft, Datorama, Salesforce and other startups until he got to Agora. So come on, enjoy listening. Yoav, how's it going? Excellent, great that you came. With us is Yoav, who is VP Product at Agora, and he's also the dad of my daughter's friend, already the second one here, Ron from Playstudios was here and it started there, we'll bring more friends from the neighborhood. So take us for a second through your background in a few sentences so we know who we're talking to, tell us a bit.

Yoav's background: Microsoft, Datorama and Salesforce

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [01:16] Gladly. So, I grew up in Haifa, studied computer science at the Technion, and started out in programming. I think I worked five years in the field, and then I got interested in things a bit beyond that, understanding a broader picture, and at that point I moved to Spain, so an MBA there. I was there three years, and at that point I came back to Israel, looked for what to do, and read a bit about this thing called product, it sounded to me like an interesting combination. Around what year was that?

Eyal David: [01:45] Wow, that was in 2013. In 2013, product, yes, makes sense. And basically you landed back in development, how was it from there?

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [01:54] No, I landed back in Israel and started straight at Microsoft, which was a convenient way to start in the product world, so basically I got there with some experience. And I got to work on interesting products there, I worked on data products, that's how I started in the field. I worked a year on Excel and I worked on Power BI. Wait, wait, you're going fast, what does it mean to work on Excel, how does it feel to work on a product like Excel? You were on Excel, how was it? I was on Excel, yes, I worked on Excel 2016, a very, very long process. Basically I added some button and functionality and new formulas and things like that. We also got there actually through machine learning, we added forecasts into it. Listen, it's super interesting, because I had this contrast between working on Excel, which is a product that shipped to customers once every four years and you have no idea what happened with it, but honestly hundreds of millions were probably exposed to what you did. And I also started working on Power BI, which was the beginning of a first SaaS product, with a completely different methodology, you deploy all the time. How does it feel, say, to move to a product like that, suddenly a higher urgency to ship it compared to other products, what does it look like? Honestly, there's urgency all the time, somehow, somehow urgency gets created all the time in this role, but yes, it's much more hectic, the release cycle all the time, different environments, lots of different parties running in different directions. It was a real transformation that happened in the organization then, that they started working this way, at least for this product. Wow, and how many years did you stay at Microsoft? So I was there three years in total, and I got a bit of an itch to move to something a bit more dynamic. Actually my wife introduced me to people from Datorama because she had worked with them in the past, and that's basically where I moved, and I started a very significant chapter in my career, I was there seven years. If before I worked on a general BI platform product, I think Datorama is another example of what we talked about, it's a specific company dealing with a SaaS solution for marketing analytics and end-to-end marketing intelligence. And suddenly it's a focus on a very specific vertical, and suddenly you understand you have specific users, you can talk to them, you can understand exactly what they do, you can know, if what you're building is something silly, you get hit over the head within a day by customers, very, very interesting. And there, basically, it's a chapter, I joined when we were 80 people in the company, I think, that order of magnitude, and slowly we grew and grew and the company grew, and after three-something years we were acquired by Salesforce, we were already, I don't know, 400 people. And you continued at Salesforce? And after that I continued at Salesforce for about four more years, a big part of which was basically, go on doing the same thing with all of Salesforce's muscle and capabilities and go-to-market, which is amazing. And how did it feel, though? A, you were probably used to it from Microsoft, but how were those culture differences, basically from Datorama, a hungry startup that wants to get sold, to a monster like Salesforce? First of all, I'll say Salesforce is an amazing company, it's very special and there are many different things in it, and being acquired by the company that's the pioneer of SaaS is amazing. I think I took it overall with understanding, at least in the first two years they also pretty much protected us as an independent business unit, so yes, there's a kind of formality and... things like that, but the perks outweigh them by far. And professionally too I think there's a lot to learn, mainly around how you take things to market there. We simply learned a lot, and suddenly you see how the business suddenly takes off when you try co-selling and different go-to-market motions and you join the broader sales organization, it was a real school. Which is exactly the difference between Microsoft and the long cycle, right, versus Datorama? Yes, probably in those years Microsoft also excelled, and I'm talking about your experience, but yes, totally, yes. And I was also in a more senior role, so I felt much closer to the decision-makers' table than when you're just starting and they kind of pass you along. I think in both cases there's a bit of this aspect of you're in Israel and the leadership is far from you, many, many hours of time zone. Which is challenging but it's part of the game. That's how it looks in the end when you try to do scaling to value, bringing it to a much bigger order of magnitude, you have to go through that. So basically, tell us a bit about Agora, what Agora does. Okay, Agora is an amazing company, basically it operates in the real estate investment management market, you can think of it a bit as real estate and a bit as fintech. But ultimately what we do is help companies that make real estate investments grow faster and in a smarter way. So our customers are over 700 companies, and these companies are, again, companies that invest in real estate, and basically they have lots of difficulties. They have a whole investment-management life cycle, from the stage where they choose what to invest in, they need to raise money from investors, they need to manage relationships with them, they need to take them through compliance and signing processes, manage a cap table and positions, and decide how they send them reports and updates and distributions of money, and all the way to all kinds of back-office processes they have that end in accounting and tax and so on. And basically they need one system that brings order to all these things behind the scenes, takes them out of the Excel sheets and all kinds of manual processes, and that's what we're trying to do at Agora.

Eyal David: [07:58] Amen. So we'll come back to Agora and hear more about the company and the product. And basically what was your connection to this world before?

How he got into real estate investment

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [08:05] So I didn't have much of a connection to this world. I think I connected to it a bit from B2B SaaS companies that deal with data and operating systems, so I connected to the general workflows, but in the end someone I'd worked with in the past introduced me to the founders, I met them, and honestly, they won me over there.

Eyal David: [08:28] Sounds to me like a super amazing idea, like an opportunity both to grow with the right people and a place with a business opportunity to succeed. You were captivated and saw amazing potential. And basically tell us in a few sentences, so you came from companies like these in the past, how did you actually start your career, how did you get, how did you get to the current company?

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [08:48] So basically I started my career in product 13 years ago. Before that I studied computer science, worked in programming, looked for something a bit beyond that, did an MBA abroad, and then came back to Israel. Product seemed like a good match to me, and I started, basically I worked at companies of different sizes. I started with what I think is a fairly classic start, at Microsoft, which is a great place to start learning, and I worked there with data products, worked a bit on Excel, worked on Power BI when it became SaaS. And after a few years working on, say, general BI, I met the founders of Datorama, they captivated me too, and that's where I started a very, very significant chapter in my life. Datorama is, if before I worked on BI as a platform, Datorama came to solve a very, very specific problem in marketing intelligence, which we'll touch on again, but it's a move from platform thinking to focusing on a very, very specific vertical. And I was there seven years, a period of lots and lots of growth. I came when there were, I don't know, 70-80 employees. Halfway through we were acquired by Salesforce in a very significant acquisition, from there it kept growing, and my career too honestly developed, I became a team lead, a group lead, and in the end I became VP Product at Salesforce. So again, it was a period where I learned a lot about growth and the move from startup to being part of a significant corporate. And basically after that I had another chapter where I was CPO at a startup in agriculture. Again, still SaaS and data, and then I took a short break, and basically that brought me to this company. So I think I've worked at companies of these sizes, I worked at a lot of B2B SaaS data companies. The field of real estate investment, heading into fintech,

Eyal David: [10:42] was completely new. But still you were captivated, we said we'd stay with that, so I'll ask about it. You saw potential there, can you share a bit about that potential? Because you're saying I didn't know the industry at all, I went in and wow. What are the things you saw happening, tell us. I know it as a private investor, I'm not crazy about it so far. What does it look like when you basically hear about a product entering this industry?

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [11:07] So first of all, I think I'm a product manager, so it's very easy for me to hear and understand it through understanding who the users are and what their difficulties are. I think I started the conversation from there, I had a series of meetings with the company's CPO. It also became very, very clear to me that there's a business model here, there's product-market fit here, and there are lots of opportunities to grow within this thing. And the vertical SaaS approach is something that fascinated me: really sticking to a certain vertical, understanding their needs all the way, developing and adding more and more and more value for them. And also the people and the vibe I got from the company, it seemed to me within, within ten minutes I understood that I could learn a lot here, I could learn a lot here, and that's it, that personally won me over. This might be a good time to say that anyone who wants to talk to me about Agora is of course welcome to reach out, we're a growing company and we're hiring lots of people, go for it.

Eyal David: [12:10] Absolutely, we usually do that too and we'll also put a link in the show notes. Tell us for a second about the market you operate in. So the market we operate in is the real estate investment market, basically

The market: investment management, not property management

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [12:21] In real estate there are lots of companies in the market. There's a very big field of property management, which is basically about managing the rental properties, all the day-to-day operations. We deal less with those things there. We basically sit on the investment itself and the position, and basically provide a layer for whoever manages the investment to communicate with their investors and basically manage all the aspects. You don't sit there because that's probably not what interests

Eyal David: [12:51] you, but your customers basically do this whole cycle, they also basically do the ongoing operations, so to speak.

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [13:00] They do the ongoing operations, many times they outsource it to another company that deals with it. There's a whole set of tools dealing with that, it's really a different field that we're not entering at this stage, but yes, it's a whole other content world.

Eyal David: [13:18] Interesting, maybe there's an opportunity to network here actually. Here to find more... Fine. Tell us for a minute really about the market size, how big.

Market size and how to choose a vertical

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [13:28] So that's a very, very interesting question, because basically when you come to work in the world of investments in general, there's a very vertical focus within the market of private investments or alternative investments, specifically in real estate. This focus comes, and if I take the example of Datorama in the past too, usually the choice of it happens at the founders' level on day one, and in both cases it happened really against the background of the founders' specific familiarity with this market and their ability to get into it. So basically I take it that in both these cases the vertical motion is very, very tied to some passion or connections or knowledge in a certain field. And then also the focus on a segment within that vertical, in both cases it happened more or less according to, okay, who can I reach most easily in go-to-market, where can I start, and you continue from there. The market is a huge market. In the end it's finite, there's a certain number of players, of players who play and who manage investments in real estate. On the other hand, when we look at assets under management, or in our case at equity under management, because we deal less with debt, it reaches huge numbers. So I mentioned we have 700 companies; in the end there's over 200 billion dollars of assets under management that are basically managed under our hands. So, and again, we're at the stage of penetrating the market, the opportunities are huge. So basically what we want to do is enter this market, find these players, bring them value, and with a vertical approach slowly add more services and more ways to bring them more value

Eyal David: [15:13] in order to get more pieces from there. One second before we continue, click the link to the Product Builder WhatsApp group in the episode description and join the community. There you can continue the discussion, ask questions and be the first to get updates on new Tachles episodes. We're waiting for you there, and now back to the episode. So basically you started listing the different verticals. Go ahead and expand on them and also tell us what you focus on most, where you see the most potential.

Alternative investments and the new investor

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [15:42] In the end there's real estate investment, there are also, as I mentioned, other alternative investments. We know there's private equity, there's venture capital, there are debt funds, there's a collection of financial instruments that keeps expanding, and it's a market that can also change going forward. We see investors basically becoming more and more, looking for more and more access to these markets, more and more solutions that maybe go in the direction of liquidity in these markets. And basically there's some change here: if in the past many companies turned to institutional investors, big institutional investors, there's now some rise of more and more investors who behave like retail investment, looking for that kind of solution. And that basically requires all the verticals we talked about in the private market to look for solutions that are more investor-friendly. So if in the past, for example, they only sent reports and sent documents, documents to sign, in the end more and more investors will look simply for a proper way to sign up for something, to search, to do the accreditation, to sign something easily, move forward, and get some portal or app where I can very, very easily understand where my investments are, what my exit options are, and so on. So I think under private investing those are more or less the different fields, and specifically real estate is a very complex field because there are many more aspects here that make managing it harder,

Eyal David: [17:20] and that's the pain point we're trying to solve. Let's even give an example: even at the compliance level, the vertical changes things hugely, right? At the funding level, at the level of the tools they need, right? Yes, yes, totally.

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [17:31] So all these companies that basically raise from investors, there are all kinds of different regulatory tracks in the US, each such track requires a different level of compliance, new rules enter the market all the time, and basically it takes a lot of work to manage all of this.

Eyal David: [17:49] Right, so Agora probably has to be a pro in the niche, in the specific vertical, and know it, and there's also the whole go-to-market here. You basically operate in the US, right, mainly?

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [18:01] Yes, we're a global company, a lot of our market is in the US. We of course operate in Israel, also in Latin America, also a bit in Europe, but we have a lot of focus on the American market. So basically you provide the ability, if I understand correctly, to easily manage

Eyal David: [18:18] lots and lots of investments or assets later on, basically when it matures, and basically everything that implies for the various investors, with basically also the ability for customer facing, right? There's basically also the customer side in this. So you basically work with lots of users while in practice you have one customer. Like not one customer, one customer per initiative, let's say.

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [18:41] Right. Our customer, the main customer we sell to, is basically the fund or the general partner. And what he needs to do when he makes an investment, there are usually two models for these things: either he invests in a specific project, or he simply invests in some fund of a collection of assets at the same time, and there are all kinds of models for this. But in the end, how does he invest? He comes and builds some business plan. And decides to find an asset; at this stage he takes a loan, and the rest of the money he needs to raise from investors. And he does this in a model where the general partner needs us, and he has lots and lots of investors he raises from. Sometimes, by the way, it's few investors and they're institutional, sometimes it's a broader audience, it depends a lot on the type of project. Sometimes the raise is for the whole fund, and sometimes it's an open fund that you raise into on an ongoing basis, but it's a very, very critical stage. It's one of the main places we focus on: how do I basically raise investors, get them to sign, carry out the collection of funds, take them through all the compliance. It's a critical stage, and from that stage he basically needs to manage the investors like you manage, in any CRM, partners, customers or vendors: communicate with them on a regular basis, offer them some portal where you expose the information to them, send them reports.

Eyal David: [20:01] Lots and lots of work. And here really, as you say, comes the very significant background of choosing the niche, the users that ultimately I'm basically building for, what matters and so on. I'll ask you a question we'll come back to later but it just pops up for me. The vertical approach versus basically the need to run really fast with a generalist approach, right? Yes. What do you have to say about that?

Vertical vs generalist: becoming the System of Record

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [20:28] I think in general it's very, very interesting. First of all there's something strategic, the mantra says: let's be the system of record for my customers, let's understand what specific place I want to sit in that's mission-critical for them, solve some very, very painful problem for them there, and from there we want to become some operating system. Since I'm focusing on 20% of the customers and not 100%, yes, the numbers are not built to scale, so I need to at least solve 100% of their problems. So basically there's an approach here of, okay, first let's find the entry point, start adding services there slowly. Strategically that's excellent. Specifically from a product perspective, I think it's a great opportunity for product managers to reach a very, very high level, because it basically demands a few things from you. A, it demands that you know the customer and the market exceptionally well. Meaning you really need to become a subject matter expert in the domain. I don't attribute that to myself, I'm on the way, but of course you really work with customers on the same use cases all the time, and you need to know very well what they do, what hurts them, what other problems you can solve for them, what's happening in the industry, which trends are coming in, which compliance and regulations are entering the field, really become an expert in the field. And I have to say that as someone who jumped between industries, it's fun to get into something, dive into a new content world and master it. The second thing it makes you do is basically operate the whole chain: you have to work very well with customer success to understand the customers, with sales to understand the sales, you really have to push yourself toward customers and toward the people in the organization who work with them in order to master this.

Eyal David: [22:33] I think I'll add to that that I see it from the side, yes. First of all, who am I to say, I don't know where the world will go, yes, everyone talks about generalist and it's probably going there. I see it at a business level, that you're creating a moat, that doesn't change. Maybe tell us a bit about the audience and the customer base and what they're used to, and then we'll also understand how significant this moat is, of relationships, of compliance, that you really know what you're talking about, and how hard it'll probably be for them

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [23:00] to adopt a company that will now come and say I'm stitching together all the verticals right off the bat. Yes. Look, I think it shows up in two things. A, when you create this kind of System of Record and Operating System and try to aspire to be a System of Action, where you actually execute things there, then first of all there's lots of data and workflows and maybe integration with other tools that make switching very hard. Meaning you become very, very, very sticky. And basically some of the organizations, I'll give an example: a month ago I was on a customer visit in the US, and it was fun, you come and meet one of the personas we target, and you see that from the morning she logs in, works on this thing, finishes, and all kinds of actions she does with other people she does through the system. It becomes something very, very hard to replace. Beyond that, over time you become a kind of partner of theirs who already understands their business and helps them. I think this was very noticeable when I was at Datorama, where we already understood marketing, and we had all kinds of customer advisory boards, and they worked with each other, and you already have a voice in the industry.

Eyal David: [24:14] There's also some data here, I think, in your world especially, that accumulates, which again, for a new company entering the field now, it's not so easy to get all the data that goes through all these closed loops you've done.

An AI strategy during a feature race

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [24:25] Of course, of course. It's data, it's data that's also very complex, and there's also what you can learn from the data holistically when you operate in this industry and also work with lots of companies and see who does what. How has AI, for example, since we touched on AI, how has AI really changed your plans, can you elaborate a bit? Yes, AI is, it's interesting to watch it happen. I'll say first of all that the company is super bullish on AI, so even before we thought about how it affects our customers inside the product, I think the company wanted to adopt AI for our own productivity inside the company, in the different departments. And that happens naturally when you have early adopters, and it happens even more when you have processes inside the company and you create some guild with a representative from each department, and really pump it to everyone: guys, this thing isn't going to replace us, but we have to learn how to work with it, it's going to change how we operate as a business. So I think that's one, and it also raises everyone's proficiency with these tools. The second thing is as a product: how do you basically come in, you have customers who are relatively traditional, they're not necessarily rushing to adopt it, on the other hand suddenly they start asking you when you meet, okay, what's your strategy, what's your strategy. And it's interesting, we operate, we said we're in a vertical, which means we have a million things to do for our customers all the time, a million customizations, we're growing, we want to run everywhere, add more functionality and more functionality and more functionality. And it's a hard decision how, how do I integrate an AI roadmap into this. Am I like a more established company that can allow itself to say stop, we're now turning everything toward AI, or do we look and slowly add things and try to understand what our AI strategy is. I think what we did at first was look, we started trickling in AI features, and slowly we understand we simply need to jump in the water and go more all-in. We won't talk about it in depth, but today we're already sitting on a very, very interesting strategy and we can't wait to start working with customers on it. Yes, we think it can significantly change how people communicate with our customers and make decisions day to day. And basically how do you prioritize things?

Eyal David: [26:57] Meaning, you built a strategy, which, fine, you don't have to go into, but how do you prioritize day to day, okay, what yes? Specifically in AI. Yes, because it's really easy today, the how there is really easy, right, it's really easy for me to come and throw out... you and I even talked about it a moment before, about how easy it is to take a solution and now run with it and find the relevant use case later, right? Yes, so I'd say it's two things.

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [27:17] A, we tried to isolate an innovation team that works with me and with the CTO and with the CPO, and they run to push something we think is really disruptive. And alongside that we also try simply to have every PM in their area play with this thing. We did a hackathon, everyone tries to push some AI capabilities in their area without it shaking up everything we need to achieve, and in parallel there's a very strong forcing function trying to create some layer on top of it.

Eyal David: [27:47] A pincer movement. And basically, what was the best thing you remember that came out of that hackathon?

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [27:54] Wow, there were so many things. First of all, many things reached customers, which is the most important thing. There are lots of hackathons with lots of things that stay on the shelf, and we took an approach that's very much, guys, work on whatever you want, but on the other hand let's go over the projects beforehand and make sure they're realistic things that can find their way into the product. Which I think is good, and that's the goal, that as many things as possible reach the product. We had two or three projects of using AI to perform actions in the product exponentially more easily and quickly. Throw us your historical data and we'll automatically create the right things and the right functions in our product for you. I think those are the coolest things, because they're things we wouldn't have reached outside a hackathon. If you don't take two days and let someone focus on something cool, it doesn't happen.

Eyal David: [28:52] No, yes, I'm thinking about your audience, you can't show things that are so fast, and you'll keep showing the loader, like, so as not to lose them, and in the back you'll do it fast and efficiently. I'm joking. So tell a company that's now debating, since you went through the process, you're going through the process, and I also hear it's probably an interesting and solid process. How do you even get into a process like this of AI strategy, where do you start?

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [29:17] I think there are two things that need to happen in parallel. There's one stage of, be a responsible product person, we're kicking something off, and someone works on the branding and the story and the design and how it fits into the product and all kinds of architecture layers. And in parallel to that there has to be something that's not classic product, to jump the gun a bit, force yourself to do something even if it doesn't make sense priority-wise. Start and see where it goes. It's very much contrary to everything I learned before AI, that everything should be considered and prioritized and backed by some framework and justify every investment. Something is happening here, it's not some hype cycle, and you have to jump in the water.

Eyal David: [30:06] Yes, I really agree. You mentioned interviews and job interviews and that you're hiring, so really, reach out to Yoav. In interviews do you also ask about these areas?

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [30:16] Yes, I think it's what we ask in every planning, like, how in the last quarter you intend to integrate better, and it's something we ask in job interviews. Again, not everything is mandatory, yes, but it's interesting to see, and it also says something about people who get their hands dirty and jump in and do things in order to learn.

Eyal David: [30:35] And really give us a trend from the interviewees who do come in: how much do you feel they basically know AI, they know what they're talking about, that they did something hands-on, like, you know, some side project

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [30:45] or previous experience, what does it look like? What do you expect to see? Honestly, I think I expect to see interest, to see that, like, beyond some buzzwords, asking them what have you done for the country, how did you advance this thing. I wish I sat more in my free time building things and flows and stuff, but I think it says something about curiosity and willingness to jump in the water, a very basic question.

Eyal David: [31:12] Yes, I definitely ask that. And tell me for a minute, let's go back for a second to the verticals basically. So now we've listed the different verticals, can you tell us a bit about competitors, about the competition happening there, basically mainly in the AI era, right?

Three types of competitors

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [31:27] Yes, I think the AI era affects competition in two ways, a bit. We have relatively a lot of competition, healthy competition, which is a good thing. We have maybe three types of competitors. We have competitors in our domain, who are usually in our domain plus something else, there are all kinds of incumbents or ones that started before us that we're trying to disrupt, and we're growing into that. That's one type of competitor. I think that's our direct and main competition, to tell the truth. There's another type of competitor, which is all kinds of players you suddenly see, small startups that suddenly pop up and can move very, very fast, sometimes maybe with the help of AI, but suddenly you, there are entry barriers that dropped a bit in this period. There's maybe a third type of competitor we see: since we basically target companies and give them a solution in CRM and in a user portal and in email tools and a bit in marketing and in accounting, there are lots of point solutions. There's a whole company that does an investor portal, there's a whole company that takes investors through the most efficient signing process there is, or data rooms, or God knows what. There are lots of things like that. It says something about the size of the solution we're building here, but these are, for example, point solutions that aren't direct competitors on everything but honestly challenge us in each and every place. Amazing. There's also another thing I'm thinking about along the way: really, again, we talked about compliance, you run really fast, you raise lots and lots of risks that maybe you'll break something, right? So like, that's maybe really another kind of moat you have. How do you even run fast in an environment like that? Regulatory, how do you do it? The regulatory environment doesn't affect our running speed much. I think it's one aspect we have within the products, we simply need to make sure we give our customers the right tools to deal with it and that we speak the right language with them, help them comply with regulation. Basically we can run very fast in parallel on many other vectors.

Eyal David: [33:42] I see. So maybe what's missing for me a bit, tell us a bit about the significant persona that uses the product, what's her leading KPI, put us a bit in that persona's shoes.

The persona: investor relations

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [33:51] Okay, so that's very, very different, because there are, for example, big funds that have a department for everything and a person for every role, and there are smaller companies. I think there's a central persona, for example, which is investor relations. That's basically the person who supports the investors on a daily basis, takes part in the fundraising activity, receives requests from the investors, needs to report results to them. It's a very, very central function whose main work is around the relationship with the investors. There are also other people whose role is fundraising, sometimes it's the role of someone called capital markets, a role called capital markets, sometimes it's one of the senior people in the fund who work on personal connections. I think those are the main roles. In bigger funds there's some fund admin role that performs many of the administrative actions, there's of course a person responsible for finance. There are very clear roles that repeat across our customers. And which KPI interests that persona the most? In the end they want, it's not necessarily a KPI, they want to keep the best relationship with the investors. So it's like a kind of internal NPS, basically? It's a kind of NPS, but in the end what interests them is access to additional money: they'll open another investment or want to raise again, or keep their reputation in the market. I think that's ultimately the most important thing, they want to be, to be perceived as professional by these parties and keep good relationships with all their investors,

Eyal David: [35:32] because in the end they want to be able to raise additional money and run their operations. So like, if we had to break it down for a moment, basically leave follow-on investments aside for a second. The basis here is basically that I as a customer will be satisfied, so what is time to first investment? How do I basically know how to communicate to them the

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [35:48] satisfaction of the other side, so that the willingness basically to invest again? So there's a somewhat complex ROI question here, because there are different people, there's the Buyer and there's the User, and in the end a lot of it is speed and ease of fundraising, it's running the operation in general, data retention, the amounts of manual work, and there are many, many aspects to it. I want to be able to produce correct financial reporting, properly, for my customers. And there are also other aspects we didn't talk about at all, which are very relevant to the vertical approach: beyond all the things we put out in core software, we also put out services, services based on this technology that we help make more, them more efficient. But we also put out options for bookkeeping and accounting, there's tax season, which is something all American investment houses are very anxious about and need to complete filings in a very specific season of the year. And basically when we think about the critical data and critical workflow, we can offer these services centrally, effectively and efficiently and also cheaply from the customer's perspective, and we become their partner for more and more of their share.

Eyal David: [37:13] Since we talked about stickiness, many companies basically, many SaaS companies run away from the whole services world. You probably decided this as a business decision and of course from a vision perspective, that you probably believe in it,

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [37:25] why actually? Is it a service you provide? That you're basically just in the middle? What does it look like? I think this approach started in the last two years. These are services we're still exploring. There are dozens of different services you could offer, for example. We're focusing, I think, on something very, very specific in the first stage, and those are places where we really think we can bring value that the traditional service struggles with. So it's that we think about all the data, and about all the activity and the transfers, and we haven't talked about payments yet, but we also enable transferring money. Is that the significant driver that basically moves customers to come to you? I don't think it's the significant driver, but I think as we advance in these worlds it'll be enormous value for our customers, and it'll enable synergy between all the different pieces happening with us. Because basically, if you manage the whole investment life cycle with us and move the money through us, then A, there's significant financial activity going through us, and B, we already have lots of pieces of data about the day to day and about the workflows you do, and each such thing helps us make the others more efficient. And that's basically a bit the thinking of becoming an OS and then becoming a System of Action, more and more sticky, more and more value that we bring.

Eyal David: [38:47] Which is interesting. I'll take you for a second to a question that occupied me. I looked a bit, like you said, basically you target two sizes of audiences, right? And basically with different pricing too. So how is the small customer basically going to benefit now from all these things you're talking about, which are bigger, for the big customer, if I understand correctly?

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [39:07] No, it's not necessarily so. I think some of these stages are shared whether you're small or big. There are all kinds of different aspects in terms of the workflows and their complexity, but in the end what interests us is your relationship with the investors, the financial management of all the investments, and I think those are the things we focus on. And listen, in the end everyone needs to raise money, everyone needs to stay in touch with their customers, everyone needs to manage the distributions and the collections and the transfers of money, and in the end we operate according to the size of the equity under management that goes through us. So I think it's something that, there are differences in the day-to-day operation, but in the end it's the same product-market fit and the same value drivers.

Eyal David: [40:01] Okay Yoav, it was really interesting about Agora, an industry I don't know at all and it's really interesting. I just want to know, tell me a bit about the culture at the company, tell us for a minute about the founders, what it looks like for you

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [40:13] in the department. The atmosphere is amazing and at the same time there's a lot of drive to succeed. I think the atmosphere is very, very driven by the founders. The founders are young and hungry guys who really came to devour this world and build a big company here that makes an impact, and they're also, I think, constantly obsessed with how excellent looks like and trying to build it that way, to build the plant pot straight, as they say. The CTO says that a lot, so I think they're very driven by that, and lots and lots of work hard, play hard mentality. The company also sits today, we sit near Nahalat Binyamin, I think it creates a very, very young atmosphere of celebrating, of giving it your all, of bringing value to customers. I think it's amazing. Listen, great food downstairs. And tell me, really, what are you looking for now, which positions? So the company is growing, you can all visit our website, there are lots and lots of jobs, things open up all the time. I believe we'll start hiring product managers soon too, because we have relatively, we currently have six product managers in my group. We're hiring all the time, from go-to-market people to developers, lots and lots of developers. And I believe in product management too we'll look more and more in the worlds of data and AI soon, because we really want to expand in these areas, and also, a bit as I told the company, there's a lot to do. Meaning also in the worlds of CRM and engagement and emails and investment management and fintech and payments, that's an area where we really, really want to expand, in payments and in embedded finance in general. I believe we'll hire in these areas. We work in a squad model, so developers, QA, product, whatever's needed.

Eyal David: [42:13] A bit of everything. So let's even just simplify it for those product people who'll come to you when the position opens. What do you expect them to come with, what understanding do you expect them to come with about Agora? Maybe we talked about even experimenting with AI beforehand and not talking fluff.

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [42:31] What would I expect them to know? I wouldn't really expect them to know anything, it's a whole world, I didn't know anything related to it. I think we invest a lot in onboarding specific to the domain. Because we assume people don't come from it. But yes, I'd expect someone to come hungry and willing to learn. And there's always this dilemma about onboarding, how deep to go, or whether to invest in onboarding or just start running with it.

Eyal David: [43:02] I think we're thinking of someone who comes to give it their all and learn and do work they'll be proud of. I think that's very, very much in your values. How did we say it, straightening the plant pot? I'll take that into my process, what was it?

Tips for junior product managers and prototyping with AI

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [43:17] Build the plant pot straight from the start and not just stick a stick in it, because Israeli. Okay, recommendations for managers, before we wrap up, recommendations for young product managers. Good question. Many people ask me how to get into the field, that they're not really managing, there's always this dilemma of, everyone's looking for a product manager with two or three years of experience, so how do you even get there? How did you do it, what was your path? I simply started at a big organization that can accommodate a product manager coming with zero experience, and there's a limited number of those in Israel. I'm just looking at our situation now at a startup, we can't afford to do that. That's one way. A second way, I go back to a former company I was at, we basically did a lot of internal hiring within the company, which is something where sometimes there's a situation to do it and sometimes there isn't. There, specifically, we had a department of very technical tier 2 support people who came from the army, from 8200, and were hungry and worked a lot with the customers, a lot with the product, a lot with the market and a lot with the product managers. And that way I think in the end we got a lot of certainty about people's character and technical abilities and about workflows and familiarity with the product and the domain, and there it was worth it for us to pay for the ramp-up into the product world, after they already knew the culture and the product managers. And it was a hysterical success. In the end I think over half of the group, it was also in high growth,

Eyal David: [44:53] over half of the product group in the end came from that same support department. How long was their time to product, their time to market, from the moment they started?

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [45:04] I think they had all been about a year or two at the company and they moved over, and they had a higher time to productivity, let's call it that, than people who came from outside and had to learn the product and the market. And obviously that requires a different mode of mentoring and oversight.

Eyal David: [45:23] Yes, right, that has a cost too, as you say, the company has to be ready for internal mobility. I really believe in this path. On the AI side, I'm throwing you there for a second, do you have some tip, some advice, some tool, some recommendation or something cool you do that you've tried or heard about?

Yoav Mayer-Wolf: [45:39] I'm sure we didn't invent it, but like, we went to visit customers to show them some mock prototype of something, and it's simply a pleasure, the day before the visit, to make something in Base44 or Lovable or whatever. Quick prototyping, showing them something they can play with and getting feedback from them, it simply shortens timelines like crazy. Amazing. And you also work with Gemini, right, you told me. I started, I started, yes. I think what I found is that specifically the Pro version I worked with, which also has a huge context window, and also in everything related to research and questions that are more like, you need someone to think with for a second, throw a bunch of information at it and help find, find good ideas. It surprised me positively. Amazing. Okay, what do you wish Yoav in five years? That he keeps being challenged every day, and every day learns new things from the amazing people I work with.

Eyal David: [46:41] Sounds very good. So come back here in a year and tell us where it stands. Yoav, it was really fun. It was interesting. And we'll meet again. Come on. Me too. Thanks. Bye bye. Hey everyone, thanks for listening. If you found this podcast valuable, you can subscribe and follow us, of course, for more episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other app. And of course if you didn't find us on some app, I'd be happy if you wrote to us. We'd really appreciate five stars on every platform and for you to follow us, so more listeners can discover us and find the podcast. You can also find previous episodes on any app or on the YouTube channel, we have links in the description. So until next time, come on, be efficient, and bye bye.